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“You’re not good enough.” Now, sign here.

By on April 8, 2008 in message responsible, sex sells, socially responsible, videos

Savage Chickens: All T.V. commercials, paraphrased

Sad, but true.

So much of marketing is about creating fear, uncertainty and doubt (or F.U.D.). Why? Because it often works.

Do we have to make our customers feel like they aren’t good enough?

It seem like an impossible task, doesn’t it? Our role as marketers is to find needs and fill ‘em. To do that, we need to help our prospects and customers see the need, or create it if it doesn’t already exist.

But advertising that tells you that you are good enough is so much more powerful, isn’t it?

Consider this ad from Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty:

The power of this ad is in its authenticity and ability to get the core of the real problem and then offer a way to cope with it.

Help your customers deal with their real-life problems and you’ll win.

Where have you seen marketing that rewards the viewer instead of making them feel inferior?

I’d love to hear about it.

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  • doveless

    Unilever has no authenticity at all in their Dove campaign, they are just telling us what they think we want to hear, same as always. Dove soap is a great product, but I don’t buy it anymore, and won’t buy it anymore as long as Unilever keeps running the Axe campaign the way they have been taking it. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t mean a d—n thing they are saying in the Dove commercials. Axe commercials are degrading to both genders, and that goes double for women. Unilever is too arrogant to think they can run crap like that, then expect any woman with brain cells to buy into the notion that they are about promoting women’s self esteem. They market Axe by telling guys they aren’t good enough to attract a babe without drugging her with some hypno spray, and the women in the commercials are all submissive, subservient, and at the mercy of the guy using the Axe products. I loved the Campaign for real beauty until I found out that both campaigns are for the same company, and then I was just appalled and disgusted with Unilever. They have been making a big deal about how they are trying to promote self esteem in tweens and teen women in particular, but the effects of their Axe commercials are having more far reaching effects on tween girls than the Dove campaign is. Many schools have banned the use of Axe by tween and teen age boys, because the boys are out in the hallway slathering themselves with the stuff between classes, and middle school girls are covering their noses and running as far as they can as fast as they can, because they are *afraid* of the product, and *afraid* that the boys will use it to molest them. Unilever maintains that they are marketing the product to 20 something men, but these commercials are reaching a much younger crowd, if not on television, then on the net, and boys as young as 11 are begging their moms to buy the stuff for them. Nope, I ain’t buying it, and as long as they take such a two faced approach I will remain disgusted with them.